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Sentences (#38)

Phillip Mark McGough, writing in Quillette, buys his way in with a bald truth ticket:

After Cologne, feminism is dead.

The whole article is solid, giving clear voice to what is already a common understanding. The feminist establishment is only in derivative, flexible, and tactical opposition to extreme sexual violence against women. It consists of hardcore leftist race-politics hacks in women’s rights drag. Now everybody knows it (which is huge).

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“Phillip Mark McGough is a UK-based writer, lawyer and blogger for the Huffington Post and the Jerusalem Post.”
As far as I can determine, he has two blog entries on each of those sites, with the most recent in April.

After Cologne, feminism is like the drunk girl who may have finally maneuvered her pussy hipster boyfriend into a bar fight. She doesn’t really want to go home with the guy who’s about to pound the shit out of him if it goes any farther, but if he pussies out, she’s done with him. If he talks tough but retreats, she’ll bitch at him about his “toxic masculinity”.

But all that really matters right now is the idea of two guys fighting over her. She’s getting kind of turned on.

She has no idea what she actually feels about any of this. Not a clue. And she’ll angrily deny it if you point it out.

Feminism is alive and well. How many women do you see demonstrating against the invasion?

Feminists cynically rallying around Bill Clinton didn’t kill feminism. Cologne shouldn’t kill it either. Weaken it? Maybe. But not necessarily. Flagrant cynicism can work. Like Havel’s greengrocer’s propaganda, repelling the sincere believers can help separate any inconveniently idealistic goats from the committed ambitious lickspittle sheep. This can be a net win for a faction determinedly advancing through a regime’s institutions.

In hindsight, did the Clinton scandals weaken feminism as a political force? Should they have? From early on feminism has been surprisingly enthusiastic about paying men insultingly inadequate compensation while forcing them to be soldiers: odd if it wanted the appearance of principled idealism. Modern VAWA and priorities of family courts don’t look too idealistic either. And consider the long retreat from rhetoric of verifiable meritocracy to vague claims of unverifiable magic diversity outperformance. Especially the rise of sullen hostility to individual instances of verifiable merit doesn’t seem to fit a timeline of feminist idealism riding high ’til Cologne killed it a few weeks ago. I visited the NSA museum twice in the naughties; sometime between the 1950s and then, official culture had changed from celebrating the sharp technical achievements of Agnes Driscoll (in e.g. various 1950s-or-so pamphlet-level official history I have encountered on the web) to hiding her picture among numerous pictures of other WW2-era women who had been in the organization with no sharply verifiable accomplishments (as office managers and such). Some natural dissent did survive. (I overheard a docent remark to a tour group how impressive Driscoll was even though the museum obscures it.) But I have seen vanishingly little dissent from feminists in litmus-tested career positions. (And does anyone want to argue that such positions are rarer than they were in the Clinton administration?)

Rise of cynical litmus-testing factions occurs in democratic politics and indeed in politics, period. Perhaps some anti-democracy zealots will doubt this; I encourage them to read. Reading Macaulay’s _History of England_ and Ibn Khaldun might be a good start. They are inherently interesting for many historical reasons other than the narrow issue of factions in autocracy, and while they have axes to grind, the miraculous intervention of Time prevents them from micromanaging talking points to give a tonguebath to any particular modern political coalition.

Of course, even successful strategies have drawbacks. Among other things (1) overpromoting baa-ing zealots underpromotes sometimes-useful traits like talent and sanity and (2) as plum supply can’t keep up with growing population of attack sheep they naturally tend to eat their own and (3) the outsider population relentlessly notices things and creates unflattering stereotypes which lower the status of individuals enjoying litmus-tested plums. #3 can gradually weaken a faction, perhaps e.g. contributing to the long decline of the established church in Europe. #2 has complex effects. #1 can quickly weaken or even kill a faction by shocking or killing its host regime. But (as per both Ibn Khaldun and Macaulay above, and also e.g. Stalin 1941) it is remarkable how a regime can be complacent about #1 even on the eve of the miraculous intervention of Reality. So right up to the moment when Reality corrects the naughty regime with his mighty paddle, a faction of politics-is-the-only-thing zealots can go from cynical internal political triumph to cynical internal political triumph.

Not sure about you, but (3) seems to me, in drawn-out cases over an extended time period (as all feats of civilizational rebirth must be) to be the surest weapon and moreover one that depends on the agency of anti-Cathedral elements, rather than the political economy of the Cathedral itself, as in (1) and (2). Undermining the public persona and legitimacy of the cynical apparatchiks is the longue duree element of Restoration, while (1) and (2) are more fortuitous.

/pol/, TRS and the like are fun, but they take themselves too seriously. It is not because /pol/ is a master meme-magician that people are converting to the dark side in droves, but because the decay is becoming undeniable. /pol/ is the first egregore the disillusioned find when they can no longer ignore the putrefaction. It’s a largely self-propelling process.

The fiscal crises of 18th century France undoubtedly preceded the agitationist foment of the pamphleteers, but this does not mean the pamphleteers were insignificant. /pol/ plays an indispensable cybernetic role.

Right. Today’s British media is focused on a study that toys for girls cost the double of similar toys for boys, and the same with T shirts and jeans. You know, the oppression of females is systemic, and has nothing to do with the fact that these days English and German and French females fear walking at night on the streets for being raped by foreigners.

Ditto. The only thing that can kill feminism is salient female dependence on males for subsistence, since it is the ideological expression of a cad/fast reproductive strategy. Rape didn’t obstruct subsaharan Africa from being a literal feminist paradise for millennia.

Feminism has an history of supporting political movements that are terribly oppressive to women in the name of ideology. While Western feminists enlisted intellectual and cultural support for the Bolsheviks, the Cheka went on an orgy of rape during the Russian Civil War. Did someone care? No, Alexandra Kollontai is still a hero for many feminists.

when you say Cologne killed feminism you are essentially arguing rationally with leftism, If crushing leftists rational could defeat it it would have been gone long long ago, Leftisms talent is its sqishyness which it acheived over time first by marching through institutions to hold all the positions of authority people look to for their opinions, and dumbing down peoples ability to think. leftists have thousands of doublethink positions it what they do.